This story qualifies for a number of reasons. First, of course, there's a budget crisis and that stinks, especially for state workers who are losing their jobs or getting furloughed. But of course the real reason for its inclusion here is because the massive cuts to transit agencies around the state, including OCTA, and Metrolink as well as future cuts coming to DASH and Metro.

Of course, there's also the sad state of affairs for our legislature. They talk tough on the environment but still cut transit while expanding highways across the state.

As much as I'd like to believe the panel was just having my back against the noxious Jack in the Box Spammers, I have to confess that I forgot about this Audi ad or I'm sure they would pick that. It's perhaps the most obnoxious car ad I've ever seen.

By now, news of LADOT Senior Bike Coordinator Michelle Mowery's gaffe has reached Portland, New York and beyond. Yes, she really did say that the reason our bike planning is so far beyond Portland is because we're not white enough. I still can't believe that's what she actually meant, but she said it so there it is.

I'm going with the LADOT complaining on being "out of the loop" on the Bike Plan release last summer because it's something they clearly meant. If it's just an example of the LADOT blowing gas, it's disheartening they're trying to wash their hands of the plan before it was even fully released. If true, it shows a shocking lack of coordination on a document that could end up being more important to cyclists in Los Angeles over the next decade than any other.

Honorable Mention: Concerns Over Slipperiness of Paint a Reason for Not Painting Sharrows, City doesn't have the bike facilities to make bike share worthwhile

That being said, the media's inability to be more than stenographers when it comes to writing a story about a highway expansion project and how awesome it's going to be is a more disturbing trend. It seems that if a state official, elected or otherwise, says that a widening is going to be good for the environment and congestion, well, that's good enough for the press.

What we really can learn from this category is that bad ideas never die in government, they're just waiting to pop back up and bite us again. That being said, for me the story that sucked up more oxygen was the Metro Board's inability to make the hard choices on AnsaldoBreda or passing the Long Range Transportation Plan after Measure R pretty much made all the long term planning decisions for them.

The AnsaldoBreda saga was just too pathetic for words. Month after month the Board was faced down by an army of hard hats despite overwhelming evidence that AnsaldoBreda was the wrong company to make the Measure R rail cars. The promise of building a factory locally was too much for the Board to ignore, even though legally they couldn't consider it if they want to keep receiving federal funds. Mercifully, after nine months of political spinlessness, AnsaldoBreda decided they could get a better deal by going through an open bidding process than bullying a bunch of politicians. Hopefully, I'm not going to have to type the words AnsaldoBreda too many more times, but we'll see what the bids to construct Metro's rail cars look like when they come in.

Yeah, they actually exempted a 100,000 seat NFL football stadium from having to undergo a full environmental review. Honestly, how anyone involved in this debacle can ever claim to give a damn about the environment and air quality without getting laughed at ever again is beyond me. Because the only review for the stadium was approved only by a political body who's members will benefit financially from the stadium's construction; we'll never see an honest assessment of what damage will be done by the traffic and construction of this football megalopolis. It's too bad Ed Roski doesn't care as much about people dieing on the streets because of speeding drivers as much as he does conning the legislature into giving him a sweetheart environmental deal.

The only good news out of this is that my Assemblyman didn't vote for the exemption. I'm going to pretend it's because I called their office everyday and complained about it. It makes me feel better.

I know there's two sides to every story, but in this case the city actually took out traffic calming because people on adjacent streets were complaining the traffic calming was working. Sounds like an open and shut case that the rest of the community needs calmed streets to divert traffic on to the arterials. The city didn't see it that way.

Word On The Street

“...currently in Metro rail's budget 25% of that goes to security of the system. Not towards more service but security of the system. I wouldn't be so harsh and cynical about this had the Sheriff's been more visible at all Metro stations...”